Swan keeps knocking on people’s doors
And other stories from the stranger side of life

A swan is terrorising residents of Northampton by continually knocking on their doors. “It rattles the letterbox with its beak and stands in front of the glass,” said one local. “He starts by rattling the letterbox then bashes the metal with its beak quite loudly. The racket reverberates through the whole house. Sometimes it does it for three hours at a time.”
Boss pays ex-worker in pennies
A man has accused his former employer of being “childish” after he received his final payment of $915 in pennies. Andreas Flaten discovered the 90,000 coins at the bottom of his driveway, along with a final payslip and a parting message from the car workshop where he worked. The coins were covered in a greasy substance and Flaten is gradually cleaning them so he can bank them.
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Boy finds lost ring in lake
A nine-year-old boy has found a wedding ring a man lost eight months ago in a lake in Clevedon, near Bristol. Andy Mitchard discovered the ring had come off after paddleboarding with his family in June. It was discovered by a volunteer, called Caspar Clarke, who had signed up to search the silt during a regular draining. After his mother posted a photo on Facebook of Caspar holding the ring, it was reunited with Andy.
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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.
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